


life can change as quick as a kiss

by helsinkibaby



Category: The Flying Doctors
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Community: 1-million-words, F/M, Fix-It, Het, Post canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 06:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12525072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: An explosion at a road traffic accident makes Johnno and Rowie realise something.





	life can change as quick as a kiss

**Author's Note:**

> For October bingo - prompts used :No no no/ hideaway/ I just wanna live/ my next thirty years

It was amazing, Johnno thought, how life could change in an instant. 

Like being perfectly happy with your life until a new doctor arrived in town, all long hair and dark eyes and attitude and all of a sudden she was all you could think about. 

Like knowing your job, your whole life, was at risk, staring into those dark eyes across the room as she tried to talk some sense into you and knowing that, even if you weren't going to take her advice, you'd be happy to sit there all night, just listening to her talk. 

Like getting your job back and kissing her for the first time, in an aeroplane hangar of all places, but not caring about the lack of romance when you saw the spark in her eyes, felt the smile on her lips. 

Like successfully piloting the plane through a dangerous storm, feeling her throw herself into your arms, hold her as she was sobbing and thank a God that you weren't even sure you believed in that you'd come through it all right. More than that, that she'd come through it all right, because you realised as you were trying to control the damn plane that you wouldn't be able to handle it if anything happened to her. 

Like swinging her off her feet when she finally said yes. 

Like driving to your own wedding only to be stopped when you're almost there, looking into those eyes that you love so much and listening to her tell you that she doesn't want to get married. 

Like forgetting about being her husband, her lover and concentrating on being her friend, when what you really want is so much more than that. 

Like hearing through the grapevine that she's leaving, that she's finally done what she once told you she wanted to do, travel, see the world. 

Like being at a one year old's birthday party and leaving in a hurry, en masse because a call came in about a massive RTA and that means all hands on deck. 

Like a petrol leak and a naked flame and an explosion that made your ears ring, lit up the sky and sent her flying through the air in a crumpled heap. 

*

"No, no, no..." 

To start with, Johnno was barely aware the words were coming from his lips as he dropped down beside Rowie letting his eyes roam over her body. Lying partly on her stomach, her hair spelled all over her face and he was pretty sure one leg was broken because it really shouldn't bend at quite that angle. He knew better than to touch her, to move her, but he didn't have to because he heard her moan and when he pushed back her hair - that should be safe, right? - he saw her eyes fluttering. With another groan, she pushed herself up and over , rolling onto her back and that was when Johnno took one look at her and yelled for Geoff, for Guy, for anyone. 

Because that gash across her stomach, the amount of blood coming from it, could not be good. Acting purely on instinct, he covered the wound with his own hands, applying pressure, regretting it only slightly when she screamed in pain. Her eyes, wide and scared, met his and he did his best to smile though he didn't know what it would have looked like. "It's OK " he lied. "It's not that bad." 

Rowie looked down at the wound then back up to him. "Still not a doctor," she gasped, pain in every syllable and he nodded, shouted for Geoff again but he didn't take his eyes off hers. Her next words broke his heart. "I'm not going to get to Venice, am I?" 

Fear threatened to choke him but he forced it back down. "Don't be silly," he told her. "Course you are. You're going to send us loads of postcards, make us all jealous." 

The colour was beginning to slowly leach from her cheeks, her eyes taking on a distinctly glassy look. "Johnno..." She swallowed hard after saying his name and it was then that Geoff finally arrived, took one look at Rowie and said a very bad word that Johnno had never heard him say before, one that would make Kate threaten to wash his mouth out with water if he dared utter it around their one year old daughter. Johnno moved his hands so that Geoff could take a better look and Rowie made a terrible sound as the pressure was released on her abdomen. Geoff muttered the word this time before getting to work, barking orders and finally telling Johnno to get the stretcher from the plane. 

Johnno didn't have to be told twice but he did make eye contact once more with Rowie, found her still glassy eyed but staring at him like he was the only thing she wanted to see. The shock of how much he wished that were true took his breath away and he forced himself to speak. "Don't go anywhere," he ordered her and, though he knew he shouldn't, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. 

Her hand closed over his arm, cold and clammy and he rested his hand over hers for just a moment before heading for the plane. 

*

It seemed like hours later that he was sitting in the base, staring at flight reports that wouldn't write themselves. Not that he was writing anything of course, because every time he picked up a pen, he looked down at his hands, saw his fingernails and the flecks of dried blood along the cuticles and nail bed that wouldn't come out, no matter how many times he washed his hands. He should probably go back to the pub, he reckoned, get something to eat, maybe some sleep. But then people would ask him for details he didn't know, or ones he didn't want to remember, look at him with sympathy in their eyes and Nancy would just plain mother him and he knew he couldn't take that. And he didn't want to go to the hospital either, not with Rowie still in surgery, not with her life hanging in the balance, not with the eyes of everyone in the hospital on him. 

So he sat and he waited. 

He tensed when he heard the front door open, relaxing only slightly when he heard Clare's voice, gentle and understanding. "I thought I'd find you here," she said and he spun slowly on his chair, half afraid of what he might see there. 

"Yeah, how's that?" It was a vain attempt at delaying the inevitable and Clare shrugged. 

"You have two hideaways, your desk and the airfield." She said the words without a hint of humour. "And I wasn't about to head all the way out to the airfield without checking here first." 

Johnno nodded, conceding the point before biting the bullet. "Is there any news?"

The question hung in the air between them for what seemed like hours but could only be seconds. "She's out of surgery," Clare told him and Johnno's breath left him in a rush. He closed his eyes against sudden tears of relief, rested his elbows on the table and buried his head in his hands. As if from very far away, he heard Clare continuing, "It was touch and go for a while there... and she's not out of the woods yet, not according to Geoff... but it looks like she's out of immediate danger." 

Her hand fell on his shoulder and he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes before he looked up at her. He tried to speak, to say thank you, but the words wouldn't make it past the lump in his throat. Instead it was Clare who spoke and she asked him a question. "Have you been in love with her all this time?" 

That surprised a laugh from his throat, tears from his eyes and for just a moment he could see Rowie standing in front of him in her wedding dress, looking like the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, if you didn't count the sadness, the pain, in her eyes. "You didn't think I ever stopped, did you?" he asked, honest at last. Clare bit her lip and, taking that as an acknowledgement that indeed she hadn't, Johnno kept going. Then again, he didn't actually think that he could stop himself; the thoughts, the emotions, they'd been there for ages, all bottled up and the events of today had provided enough pressure that they had nowhere else to go but out. "All I wanted - all I ever wanted - was for her to be happy. When we called off the wedding, she told me I couldn't make her happy, she had to do it for herself. And when we called it off for good, she told me that she reckoned we were too different, we'd only make each other miserable. What was I supposed to do, Clare? Fight with her, refuse to listen to her, ignore her completely?" He ran a hand over his forehead, through his hair. "I didn't want to be that bloke. So I walked away. Pretended I was fine with it and told myself that I could just stop loving her." The laugh that escaped him was harsh, even to his own ears. "And until today, I even thought I was getting away with it. Right up until I thought she was going to die right in front of me."

His throat choked with tears and he had to stop, had to look down. Clare patted his shoulder, her whole demeanour sympathetic. "You should go to the hospital," she told him. "You should be there when she wakes up." 

Johnno rubbed his eyes again, torn, as ever, between what he wanted and respecting Rowie's wishes. "I'm not so sure she'll want to see me." 

Clare made a little noise at the back of her throat, one that had him looking up at her sharply. "Johnno," she said, "I don't think she'd want to see anyone else." 

*

Even though it was crowded after the RTA this late at night, the hospital was quiet. All the beds were full but the occupants were sleeping and those who were keeping vigil were either napping on chairs or sitting quietly, so as not to disturb. The night staff were tiptoeing around the place, mindful of their charges, while those who had been on shift during the day, or pressed into action during the crisis, had already gone home to catch some shut-eye, the better to prepare themselves for whatever would await them the next day. 

But Johnno couldn't sleep, not in the hospital and not back at the Majestic. Instead he sat in the chair beside Rowie's bed, her hand, small and cold, in his, and he watched her. Watched her chest rise and fall, listened to the rhythmic beeping of the monitors and he waited. 

He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there when her fingers twitched and her eyelids fluttered. He was on his feet in an instant, his hand still gripping hers, his other hand resting on her forehead, running back through her hair. A little whimper came from the back of her throat and he leaned in close so that she could hear him. "It's OK " he told her. "You're in hospital, you're safe... you're going to be fine."

Her eyelids fluttered again and this time they opened, her pupils huge and dark in the dim light. She frowned, confused, and he knew he was grinning like an idiot but he didn't care. "Johnno..." Her voice was rough, hoarse, but he knew better than to give her water before she'd been seen by a doctor. 

"I'm here." Without thinking about what he was doing, he brought their joined hands to his lips. Her fingers tightened on his and tears sprang into her eyes. Something tugged painfully in Johnno's chest because he'd always hated to see her cry. "Hey, there's no need for that." He moved his free hand, wiped the tears away. "I mean, I know I'm not the most pleasant face to wake up to, but I didn't think things were that bad..."

She chuckled, then winced, her free hand going to her abdomen. 

"OK, so I won't make you laugh, got it." Even if the sight of her smile made his stomach flip with fresh waves of relief. "Mind you, that's something that never was a problem, eh?" 

Rowie shook her head, closed her eyes. "Don't." 

It might have been a whisper but he could hear the crisp tone loud and clear. His response was automatic, just like it would have been months ago when her smile was enough to make the sun rise and set for him. "Oh, that's right, in a hospital bed and still ordering me around. Lovely." 

This time, her smile was wobbly. "I thought I was going to die," she whispered and it was his turn to shake his head, hoping that she couldn't actually hear his heart breaking. 

"Nah," he said, trying to ignore how he'd been very afraid of the exact same thing. "You're too tough to die." Except she didn't look so tough, not then, lying there in that bed. She looked frail and tiny and so, so fragile that a good gust of wind would blow her over. And she looked even more fragile when tears began to slowly leak from her eyes, making silvery paths down her pale cheeks. "Besides... I wouldn't let you." 

His words didn't stop her tears. In fact, they only flowed faster. "I just want to live, Johnno," she whispered. 

"You will," he promised her. "You'll get to go to Venice... Paris... all the places you've dreamed of. And you'll look back on all this and it'll just be a like a bad dream." 

Rowie's hand tightened on his. "All of it?" 

The question, the look in her eyes when she asked it, made his heart stop in his chest before stuttering painfully to life again. "Well..." He brushed her hair back behind her ears, even though he didn't really need to. "Maybe not all of it." 

She looked into his eyes then, a slow smile spreading across her lips and, once again, it was like sunrise and sunset all at once. "Good," she whispered and her fingers tightened on his as her eyes fluttered shut and she fell back asleep.

*

Johnno knew Rowie's recovery was going to be a long one but he was pleasantly surprised by the fact that she, not possessed of an abundance of patience at the best of times, didn't immediately prove the adage that doctors made the worst patients. Instead, she did as she was told, entertained all the people who dropped by to say hello, laughed with the nurses, accepted Geoff's diagnoses without question. The only spate of rule breaking that she indulged in was over food when Nancy began to sneak her in some home cooking, which amused Rowie hugely but not as much as when Vic did the sneaking. 

Well, that and the fact that Johnno came to visit her every day, sometimes well out of visiting hours and no-one said a thing. 

He'd grown so used to seeing her in that hospital bed that he actually got a fright one day when he pulled back the curtain and saw the bed empty. He spun on his heel, met Jackie's smiling face. "I was trying to get to you," she chided him gently. "Kate came to visit her with Scarlet, she put her in a wheelchair and she and Penny took them out to the back lawn." Johnno hesitated, suddenly unsure of what to do and Jackie smiled, patted his arm. "I'm sure she'd love to see you," she said, a tone to her voice that was vaguely knowing and made Johnno wonder just how much and exactly what people were saying about him and Rowie. 

But in a straight up choice between finding out and seeing Rowie, there was no real choice at all so he turned around and headed for the back lawn, choosing to ignore Jackie's knowing grin as he did so. 

He didn't have any trouble finding them, Kate and Penny sitting on a bench, Rowie's wheelchair beside them, Scarlet crawling on the grass in front of them. It was Penny who saw him first, elbowing Kate not very subtly at all. Kate looked around, her eyes lighting up as she saw Johnno and she didn't blink as she stood, scooping up her daughter. "We'll let you have some time alone," she said to Rowie and, with a giggle from Penny, the three of them were gone. 

Leaving him and Rowie alone together. 

Not that that was anything new. They'd been alone together lots of times. They'd been alone together lots of times in the last few weeks. 

But something felt different today. 

Maybe it was the change in scenery, or the way she was looking at him, or the way that everyone had been looking at him up to now. 

Either way when she half smiled at him and said, "Pretty obvious, eh?" he knew it wasn't just him. 

"Little bit," he allowed as he sat down on the bench, so close to her that he could have reached out and taken her hand if he'd wanted to. He did want to but he held himself in check, looked around the lawn instead and found it deserted. "I'm surprised it took you this long to stage a jailbreak." 

Rowie grinned as she ducked her head, her cheeks darkening slightly. "I just got sick of being cooped up," she told him, wrinkling her nose as she looked up at the blue sky, not a cloud overhead. "It's nice to feel the sun again." 

"Looks good on you." The words were out before he could think about them, certainly before he could stop them. For a second, he considered trying to take them back but her smile widened and he thought better of it. "You think you'll be getting out of here soon?" he tried instead and she nodded. 

"That's why Kate was here... she offered me their spare room till I'm properly back on my feet again." He must have looked surprised because she shrugged. "Well, I can't exactly manage the stairs at the pub with my leg like this... and having a doctor and nurse on call probably isn't the worst idea." 

"And then Venice?" 

Once again, the words were out before he could stop them. This time though, she didn't smile. Instead she bit her lip, looking uncertain. "I don't know," she admitted. "I mean, I still want to go there... I still want to travel. But for a while there, I really thought I was going to die... and it made me think that I have some unfinished business here. Or maybe business that isn't as unfinished as I thought." 

Hope sprang eternal but just in case he asked, "Yeah? What's that then?" 

Rowie held his gaze for a long moment. Then, without blinking, she reached out and closed her hand over his. It was colder than he might have expected, given the heat of the day, and he was so distracted by that that he nearly missed her next words. "You know." Her fingers tightened on his as she spoke and he sucked in a deep breath. 

"Yeah," he said, after a pause of his own. "Reckon I do." He moved his hand slightly, lacing their fingers together and the smile that broke over her face was brighter than sunshine. He felt an answering smile crossing his own lips and he didn't know how long the two of them sat there like that, holding hands and grinning like idiots. 

"Have we just decided something?" he asked her eventually. 

She'd asked him that question, or something like it, once in a diner in Broken Hill. He hadn't been able to give her a proper answer, not then, but ensuing events, especially the events of the last few weeks, had cleared his mind somewhat. "I don't know, Johnno," she said quietly. "I don't think I have all the answers. All I know is that I've spent the last thirty years looking for something... and no matter what I did, it was never enough. Until I was lying on that road, sure I was dying... and there you were." 

There were tears in her eyes now and while he hated to see her cry, he had to ask. "So, what are you saying?" 

"I'm saying..." She took a deep breath, paused and looked away. His heart stuttered painfully in his chest from the fear of losing his dearest wish, but then she looked back at him, eyes bright, jaw determined. "I'm saying that I'm not sure what I want. Not everything anyway. But when I think about my next thirty years... I want you there. With me."

Johnno let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "I've got some leave built up," he told her. "By the time you're mobile, I'll have a bit more... Venice sounds pretty good. If you're up for some company that is?" 

Rowie laughed, a beautiful sound and one of pure relief mixed with joy. "I'd like that," she told him, her eyes sparkling with happiness and tears combined. "A lot." 

Leaning forward, Johnno brought his face close to hers, so close that their lips were almost touching, then he moved back, cupping her cheek with one hand. "Is this OK?" 

Nodding, Rowie tilted her head and leaned in towards him. "Just what the doctor ordered," she quipped and while his initial reaction was so comment on the joke, their lips met before he could and it wasn't a laughing matter any more. 

Not when all he could think about was that he really wouldn't mind doing this for his next thirty years, and more after that.


End file.
